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 Tales from real life |
| Well, if they're not true, they oughta be! |
And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” - Matthew 22:35–40 I was just a child when the Civil Rights Act was passed, but I do remember when the 'Summer of Love' and Woodstock were in the news. For a brief time, it seemed like humanity was poised for a great leap forward in equality, justice, and compassion. But the hopefulness of the 60's counterculture soon faded. Partly due to drug abuse and lack of direction, but mostly because of mockery from the conservative right. To love one's neighbor was considered unpatriotic, unamerican, and just plain ridiculous. For 80's conservatives, the business of America became giving Americans the business. Even then, there was a foul stench of Trumpism at the core of the GOP. In the 90's, Newt Gingrich abandoned the concept of a moral majority and turned the GOP onto the low road of wedge politics that led directly to Donald Trump and insurrection. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. - Acts 4:32-35 I grew up with the cold war and the threat of communism. We all knew for a certainty that 'commies' were bad guys who would rape our women, take our land, and destroy the American way of life. In reality, there was no communism, only fascism dressed up as 'the will of the people'. As I grew older and wiser, I realized that the conservative right was more opposed to the theory of communism than to its fascist implementation in the Soviet Union. The central theme of Marx's communist manifesto is clearly borrowed from the Acts of the Apostles. Demonizing communism allows the haves to ignore the example of the apostles and exploit the have nots. Today, the voracious right-wing politicians and Televangicals never have enough. They constantly beg for dollars while distributing pennies to the poor. These false teachers practice Christianity in much the same way that Stalin practiced communism. Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me. - John: 14:6 Today, we have the embodiment of dishonesty in the person of Donald Trump. He uses the words of fascist dictators to promote himself as the 'will of the people'. He calls his neighbors vermin and vows to 'root them out'. He misrepresents his business worth to commit tax fraud and bears false witness against judges and elections workers. He presents himself as a golden calf to be worshiped by the MAGA lemmings. The Televangicals even call him the second coming of the Messiah. Trump responds to multiple criminal indictments with a declaration that he has a constitutional right to lie, cheat, and steal. He places himself above the laws of man and even above the Law of God. The January 6th uprising may have failed, but the conspiracy to illegally return Donald Trump to the White House is ongoing. James Comer's 'weaponization' committee is just one part of that conspiracy. Comer is blatantly abusing the power of his office to swing the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump. House republicans have elevated an insurrectionist to the position of Speaker. And the stink of Trumpism is even attached to members of the Supreme Court who have adopted a 'me first' philosophy to justify taking bribes from right-wing political donors. The Trump conspiracy has already been proven. Scores of conspirators have been sent to prison. And dozens of republican representatives and senators are also implicated in the conspiracy. They may very well face prosecution as the wheels of justice continue to turn. These desperate conspirators are already forming plans for a second insurrection with the ultimate goal of receiving presidential pardons. They are openly proclaiming a post-election reign of terror to purge their enemies and establish a Trump Reich. So, today we have a unique and terrifying situation. Anyone who works on Trump's 2024 presidential campaign automatically becomes a co-conspirator to commit insurrection. Donald Trump's self-worship violates God's greatest law. His hatred of his neighbor violates the second greatest law. Trump's fraudulent business practices and his conspiracy to overthrow democracy violate the laws of man. And anyone who supports Donald Trump and follows his example is equally guilty in the eyes of God and the courts of man. |
In the mid 1900's people used to gather and sit together at table for entertainment as well as food. Rectangular slips of heavy paper would be randomly distributed to guests who would rearrange them, then compete to lay them down in an orderly pile. This was called 'playing cards'. It often went on late into the night, accompanied by social drinking, laughter, and even the exchange of considerable sums of money. Pinochle was a popular card game among middle-class families of modest means. Both my parents and my in-laws were fond of playing it. I learned the game early and was often pressed into service when there weren't enough adult players to make up a four-person game. I took pinochle cards to college with me and taught my classmates to play. Later, my wife and I spent many evenings ignoring the TV background noise as we teamed up against her parents. A standard deck has 52 cards, but a pinochle deck has only 48. It uses the sequence of nine through ace in four suits, but there are two of each card. That means there are 8 nines, 8 tens, 8 jacks, and so on. Scoring is done both with card combinations in one's hand, and by taking tricks during play. Each hand begins with a round of bidding to determine which team will lead during the playing of tricks. The winning bidder selects a trump suit and then their partner passes them four cards to improve their hand before play begins. Any trump card beats all other suits and is beaten only by higher trump cards. A typical hand might score 300 to 400 points and the first team to 1500 wins the game. The ace is the highest ranked card in a pinochle deck and nine is the lowest. One of the most rare and valuable hands is the collection of all eight aces. It's worth one thousand points and pretty much assures a win in any particular game. More common is a run of five cards in the same suit from ten through ace. That counts for 150 points. It's difficult to make one's bid without a run. If the player who wins the bid fails to make that many points while playing the hand, then the bid is subtracted from their score. I was watching a game in the dorm one day when an unusual situation arose. My friend Mark and his partner Steve were bidding against each other. That's considered a breach of etiquette as well as a poor strategy for making the bid. It turned out that Steve was dealt a run in spades and understandably felt compelled to win the bid. Mark had the other seven aces in his hand, and he was determined to go for eight. He figured his odds were one in three that Steve would have the eighth ace. And he would probably never have that good a chance again. Mark eventually won the bid and Steve was puzzled when Mark called spades as trump. What to do? He couldn't pass a five-card run. Four cards were exchanged, and Mark assumed an 'oh well' expression. He still had a pretty good hand, after all. He decided to be theatrical and led with six aces, saving the trump suit for last. He was flabbergasted when Steve played his only remaining spade, the ace, to Mark's lead. "You had the ace!" Mark shouted. "Why didn't you pass it?" "Well, only an idiot would bid without an ace of trump," Steve replied. Mark struggled, red-faced, to find adequate words to express the extent of his frustrated rage. Finally, he threw the rest of his cards at Steve and stormed out of the room, followed by gales of laughter from the onlookers. Game over. |
A recent reviewer noted that I used a forced rhyme in my poem Aging Out. The comment was more tongue in cheek than critical, and I wasn't offended (or fazed). My literary misdemeanor was to rhyme mate with faith, and I plead guilty as charged. I prefer to use natural rhymes, but I won't let a little thing like a near rhyme prevent me from completing a poem, especially if I like the lines or if the poem is just a quick bit of fluff. There's more than one way to force a rhyme, and we each have our own opinion as to what is and isn't acceptable. Here are some more egregious examples (in my opinion) for your consideration: Singular/plural - One word ends in 's' and the other doesn't. This is a subset of the near rhyme, and I am sometimes guilty of this one as well. Near rhymes have to be judged case by case, some work better than others. In Aging Out I also rhymed sown with home, and it escaped the reviewer's notice. Awkard word order - This usually means twisting a sentence to put the rhyme word at the end. I did this in my poem Seize Cruise  : as the lash, my lessons it taught. This is a fractured sentence, but it places the word taught at the end of the line to complete the needed rhyme. Seize Cruise was an early effort, and I didn't even realize what I'd done. I may go back and try to improve that line someday.Breaking meter - This occurs when the stressed syllables of the rhyme don't match, as in to sing and laughing. I try to be sensitive of meter even more than rhyme, so I don't do this unless it's by ignorance of proper pronunciation. Irrelevant line - This is quite common for beginning poets who can't think of a good next line. Something like this early draft: Tiger, tiger burning bright, can't go on an airline flight. I hope I'm not guilty of this one, but critics may not find all of my lines to be relevant, either. Sight rhyme - This is when two words look similar, but sound different as in rough and cough. There may be such a thing as visual poetry where this would work, but it doesn't work for me. So, should we use forced rhymes? Of course not, but I won't 'should' on your poetry if you don't 'should' on mine. I think there's room for all of us to express ourselves in a manner that feels right to us. Even if it's 'wrong' per the critics. As Mark Twain might have said (if he'd written poetry): "It's a poet of poor imagination who can't think of at least two ways to rhyme a word." |
My son sent me a tongue-in-cheek text to warn of the looming danger of Friday the 13th. Being contrary in nature, I replied that the concept of Friday is merely a conceit of Judeo-Christian culture. And that the number 13 is just an accident of using base ten to count the days of the month. Having a mind like a grasshopper, I began to think about other calendars and other number systems. Ancient calendars all seem to be based on the lunar cycle. Moon phases are obvious even to the casual observer, but the 29.53 day lunar month doesn't sync well with the 365.242 day solar year. So, you need 12.368 lunar months to equal one solar year. The Babylonians figured this out quite accurately. They used twelve 30-day months and added an additional month every few years to keep things in sync. Pre-Babylonian calendars usually didn't name the months or days, and they didn't use the concept of weeks either. They simply counted the days from one new moon to the next. Some early cultures determined that the 1st, 7th, and 15th of each month should be a holy day. The Babylonians made every seventh day a holy day and they also named the months. The Hebrews borrowed some of the Babylonian concepts and the modern 7-day week is based on their calendar. The Romans named the days of the week for their Gods. What English speakers call Friday was known as Venus' day to the Romans (it morphed into Viernes in Spanish). The English word 'Friday' didn't come into use until much later. The earliest references come from the 11th century CE. The number 13 is rather arbitrary, too. It's based on humans having ten fingers to count on. But that hasn't always been the case. At least two Native American tribes counted up the spaces or along the knuckles in a base eight number system known as octal. I used octal back in 1985 when programming an early computer system. Octal uses only the digits 0 through 7. Today, computer languages use a base sixteen system known as hexadecimal. It uses A through F as digits in addition to the more familiar 0 through 9. The simplest system is base two, or binary, which uses only the digits 0 and 1. Each digit (or bit) in binary is a power of two, 1 = 1, 10 = 2, 100 = 4, 1000 = 8 and so on. All digital information is stored in binary inside your computer and the binary representation of 13 is 1101 (8 + 4 + 1). Octal separates binary numbers into three-bit groups. So, 1101 is parsed as two digits, 001 and 101, and that's written as 15 octal. Hexadecimal separates binary numbers into four-bit groups. So, in hex, 1101 is parsed as one digit and written as simply D hex. There are many choices from other cultures, but I can claim both Venus and D as part of my heritage. So, happy Venus D! p.s. My friend Gerry pointed out that we instinctively use base ten when counting on our fingers. But if we count in binary, with each finger representing one bit, then we can count up to 1023! (or up to 1,048,575 with our shoes off) |
| Here's a sentimental ballad for Halloween. It's sung to the tune of Dream a Little Dream of Me: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=dream+a+little+dream+of+me&... Scream a Little Scream Night closes in around you, humid mist rises up to surround you, fitful moans among moss dripping trees, scream a little scream for me. Stealthy steps and rustlin' of leaves, a tingling sense of danger unseen, strain your eyes but it's too dark to see, scream a little scream for me. You can run but there's nowhere to go, dear, it's a round-trip flight. Every path leads you right back to me, dear, you're mine tonight. Just scream until I find you, won't take me long to sneak up and bind you. Gasp in heart-pounding fright as you flee, scream a little scream for me. Don't try to run, there's nowhere to go, dear, can't avoid the bite. Your creamy neck is what I adore, dear, it's mine tonight. Glassy eyes roll back in your head, soon you'll be waking among the undead, feel the razor-sharp fangs sink in deep, scream a little scream for me. |
I recently wrote a poem, Just Sayin' , about filler words that can grate on the ear. There are a lot of different forms and styles, but they mostly boil down to being unable or unwilling to express true feelings. Stock words and phrases allow people to spend time together and share a conversation without really revealing themselves. They're a form of small talk, a way to make a connection without risking real intimacy.One of my pet peeves is the casual use of profanity. Most of us have rather dull days at work and spend our evenings in front of the TV. We rarely have anything interesting to say. But if we dress up the dross with shocking words, it sounds more meaningful. I don't object to strong language when the situation warrants. I can use some choice words if I'm truly angry or when I'm really in pain. But how can a person signal real emotion when every third word of their daily discourse is an F-bomb? The appropriate use of filler words, stock phrases, and profanity is a topic for serious consideration by an author. It's a matter of balance. The dialogue in our stories has to feel natural to draw the reader in. We have to use some filler words and casual profanity to capture a particular character's voice. But not so much as to annoy the reader. Too much boring, repetitive, or objectionable stuff will drive the reader away. If I were to write dialogue from my real life, it would be a horrible mishmash. I often catch myself saying something that would make me cringe if I saw it in print. I have a tendency to speak half a thought and leave it hanging because the conclusion is obvious (to me). Or I'll feel unsatisfied about what I've said and start over, rephrasing the whole thing from the beginning. I'm sure my audience really appreciates hearing it twice! I thank God that I have the time to review and edit these blog entries before you read them. And you should too. |
Trigger Warning: This post contains math. Reality is a harsh mistress and for interstellar travel, physics is a bitch. It takes light, which weighs almost nothing, more than four years to travel from our solar system to Alpha Centauri. How long would it take for even a very small spaceship? Let's assume the ship has a mass of 15,000 kilograms (33,000 lbs.), about the same mass as a large motorhome. We'll limit acceleration to 1G (9.8m/sec2) for passenger comfort, and top speed to 0.8C because the energy required for acceleration goes up exponentially as we approach light speed. With this mass and acceleration, the trip would take 6 years each way. So, how much thrust would we need and how much fuel? The thrust calculation is fairly simple, Force = mass x acceleration. 15,000 kg x 9.8m/sec2 = 147,000 Newton (323,400 lb). The problem is that we need to apply that thrust for approximately six months to accelerate and another six months to decelerate (in between, we'll coast for five years at 0.8C). And that's only one way. We also have to carry enough fuel to do it again on the return trip. The fuel requirement is much more difficult to compute, but for simplicity, let's consider the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo 11 to the moon. It had three stages. Stage 1 held 2.1 million kg of fuel and provided 34,500 kilonewtons of thrust for 168 seconds. Stage 2 held 440,000 kg of fuel and provided 4900 kN of thrust for 6 minutes. Stage 3 held 110,000 kg of fuel and provided 890 kN of thrust for 8 minutes. The total fuel carried was 2.65 million kg and it provided a burn time of about 17 minutes. If we assume that the Saturn V engines could be 'throttled back', then all three stages could provide 147,000 Newtons of thrust for about 880 minutes. So, one Saturn V booster would last only 14.7 hours. For two six-month burns, we'd need the equivalent of 924 of them to reach Alpha Centauri. And another 924 to get back to Earth. And even that very rough estimate is outrageously optimistic, because we have to accelerate all those billions of kilograms of fuel in addition to our 15,000 kg spaceship. It's simply not possible to carry enough fuel to accelerate to near light speed with a conventional rocket booster. So, carrying fuel seems to be a non-starter for an interstellar mission. But what about an external push? In my story Project Hermes I propose using a solar sail to accelerate a tiny ship with a beam of sunlight. This light pressure is real, but it's not very strong (you can buy a radiometer on Amazon that demonstrates the effect). In the story I've imagined a solar boost satellite orbiting near the sun that amplifies the solar flux by a factor of a million. So, what would this concept look like? We still need a thrust of 147,000 newtons to accelerate our 15,000 kg spaceship at 1G. And the solar flux near the sun can provide a push of 0.00008 newton per square meter. Multiplied by a million, the solar boost beam would provide a thrust of 80 N/m2. So, our sail would need a surface area of 1840 square meters to produce 147,000 N of thrust. A round sail 48 meters in diameter would do the job nicely. Is it possible to build such a boost satellite near the sun? Could our spaceship actually 'balance' on the end of the beam for six months? I don't know those answers, but the concept seems more feasible than carrying billions of kg of rocket fuel. Of course, there's still the question of deceleration at Alpha Centauri and then the return trip to Earth. How does our spaceship accomplish that with very little fuel on board? My solution in the story is to not slow down at all. I have the ship do a gravity slingshot maneuver and retrace its path toward Earth. As it approaches our solar system again, it's decelerated by the same solar boost beam. Is such a maneuver possible? Is it worth it to make a 12-year trip for a 15-minute pass through the Alpha Centauri system? I don't know, but again, it seems more feasible than an impossibly huge rocket. |
"What's your sign?" was a common pickup line back in the disco era. Many a hot babe would choose her dance partner based on the supposed compatibility of their signs. A really smooth operator knew what sign to claim for himself to pique her interest. Astrology is less popular today, but it's still widely followed. Newspapers still print them. And even though newspapers are going the way of disco, there are thousands (millions?) of web sites to choose from. Even the venerable and respected Washington Post has a daily horoscope section in their online edition. I rarely look at it, and I don't put much stock in the predictions, but I do know my sign. I'm a Gemini. Or am I? I don't know who wrote out the first astrological tables and defined the 'characteristics' of the signs, or by what authority they did so. There must have been a time when someone first charged a fee for providing celestial guidance. I do know that the signs are based on the constellations of the zodiac. And the zodiac is the belt-shaped backdrop that the sun moves through during a solar year (as viewed from Earth). The moon and the planets also appear to travel around the zodiac. The stars that make up each constellation may appear to be in a two-dimensional grouping when viewed from earth, but they are actually separated by vast distances in the 3-D universe. Those pictures we see in the sky are totally dependent on our personal perspective. So the shape of the constellations can change over time as our solar system makes its way through the cosmos. The astrological signs are also linked to calendar dates, but calendars were notoriously inaccurate for many thousands of years. In western culture, we use a modified version of the calendar from ancient Rome. That moon-based calendar wasn't a good match for the solar year. So, the Julian reform had to make the year 46 BC 445 days long to get their calendar back in sync with the spring equinox. Imagine how long it must have seemed to wait for New Years Eve! The Julian calendar was better, but still not perfect. In 1582, the Gregorian reform dropped ten days out of the calendar to sync things up again. October 5th was followed by October 15th. Some countries resisted the change and waited until things got even worse. Britain had to drop twelve days from their calendar in 1752. It's really weird to realize that the date in Europe depended on where you lived for almost 200 years. My point is that even ten days difference in the calendar would make me a Taurus instead of a Gemini. It's all too confusing and arbitrary for me. I'll just go with the Chinese year of the Rooster. I learned that I'm a Rooster from the paper place mat in a Chinese restaurant. Now there's a system that actually makes sense! |
I recently read an article about data backup that described the 3 - 2 - 1 system. Three copies on at least 2 different media with at least one copy off-site. It sounds like a lot of effort, but it assures that your work will survive any disaster. And with wildfires constantly in the news, it seems frighteningly possible that your computer, your backup drive, and your printed copies could go up in smoke with little or no warning. So, what to do? Multiple copies and different media are fairly easy, I alternate data backups between an external HDD and an SD card. All I back up are my data files, so a lot will fit on even a 32Gb SD card. And I print out my finished work from time to time as a third copy. My WDC portfolio qualifies both as a third copy and as off-site storage. Cloud storage would serve the same purpose. At WDC, I have a couple of hundred finished pieces and a book with numerous entries that are set to private. Those entries contain odd ideas, poem fragments, partial stories to be completed 'later', and various things that are actively in-work. My book doesn't back up everything, but it has most of the important stuff. |
Lilli ☕  raised the subject of potatoes in her forum today: Question of the Day! I won't try to choose one recipe or even a specific type of potato to call a favorite. For me, the potato is simply a fact of life: always present, always welcome, and never disappointing. Some people have potatoes every day. I have potatoes with every meal. It's rare for me to sit down to eat without some form of potato on my plate. Hash browns, french fries, streak fries, jo-jos, tater-tots, chips, mashed, boiled, roasted, scalloped, baked, twice-baked, and of course there's my wife's excellent potato salad. I even have potato pancakes for breakfast at our local diner. You could say that potatoes are in my blood. They're certainly well-established around my middle. If we are what we eat, then just call me spuds. When I was a child, my family grew our own. We had a half-acre garden and half of that was potato patch. In the spring, I would cut last year's left-over potatoes into wedges and plant them with their 'eyes' pointing up. I'd weed them and 'hill' them up in the summer. Mom would pay me fifty cents to gather a pint jar full of potato bugs and then drown the nasty little buggers. When the vines succumbed to Autumn's frost, I'd dig potatoes for days and haul them to the root cellar. There were wooden cribs along the back wall where the potatoes would keep until next spring. And the cycle would repeat. And the cycle would repeat. |
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